June 2018

Hardcover

THE PRESIDENT IS MISSING confronts a threat so huge that it jeopardizes not just Pennsylvania Avenue and Wall Street, but all of America. Uncertainty and fear grip the nation. There are whispers of cyberterror and espionage and a traitor in the Cabinet. Even the President himself becomes a suspect, and then he disappears from public view…Set over the course of three days, THE PRESIDENT IS MISSINGsheds a stunning light upon the inner workings and vulnerabilities of our nation. Filled with information that only a former Commander-in-Chief could know, this is the most authentic, terrifying novel to come along in many years.

Vice presidents occupy a unique and important position, living partway in the spotlight and part in the wings. Of the 48 vice presidents who have served the United States, 14 have become president; eight of these have risen to the Oval Office because of a president’s death or assassination, and one became president after his boss’s resignation. In interviews with more than two hundred people, including former vice presidents, their family members and insiders and confidants of every president since Jimmy Carter, Kate Andersen Brower pulls back the curtain and reveals the complicated relationship between our modern presidents and their vice presidents.

Kelly Sundberg’s husband, Caleb, was a funny, warm, supportive man and a wonderful father to their little boy Reed. He was also vengeful and violent. But Sundberg did not know that when she fell in love, and for years told herself he would get better. It took a decade for her to ultimately accept that the partnership she desired could not work with such a broken man.

In December 2016, the world was shaken by the sudden deaths of Carrie Fisher and her mother Debbie Reynolds, two unspeakable losses that occurred in less than 24 hours. The stunned public turned for solace to Debbie’s only remaining child, Todd Fisher, who somehow retained his grace and composure under the glare of the media spotlight as he struggled with his own overwhelming grief. Now, Todd shares his heart and his memories of Debbie and Carrie with deeply personal stories from his earliest years to those last unfathomable days.

One afternoon at an outdoor market in India, a man’s shadow disappears --- an occurrence science cannot explain. He is only the first. The phenomenon spreads like a plague, and while those afflicted gain a strange new power, it comes at a horrible price: the loss of all their memories. Ory and his wife Max have escaped the Forgetting so far by hiding in an abandoned hotel deep in the woods. Their new life feels almost normal, until one day Max’s shadow disappears too. Knowing that the more she forgets, the more dangerous she will become to Ory, Max runs away. Desperate to find Max before her memory disappears completely, he follows her trail across a perilous, unrecognizable world.

The body of a woman found in an Arizona border town, presumed to be an illegal immigrant, disappears from the town morgue. Then, more bodies, dead from an inexplicable disease that solidified their blood, vanish as well. Soon, the U.S. government must come to terms with what they're too late to stop: an epidemic of vampirism that will sweep first the United States, and then the world. With heightened strength and beauty and a steady diet of fresh blood, these changed people, or "Gloamings," rise to prominence in modern society. Soon people are beginning to be "re-created," accepting the risk of death if their bodies can't handle the transformation. As new communities of Gloamings arise, popular Gloaming sites come under threat from a secret terrorist organization. But when a charismatic and wealthy businessman, recently turned, runs for political office --- well, all hell breaks loose

Elia Furenti is 16, living in a secluded house with his parents, a life so unremarkable that even its moderate unhappiness has been accepted as normal. Then a new friend arrives in Ponte, firmly propelling Elia to the edge of adulthood, and everything starts to unravel. Elia's father, Ettore, is let go from his job, and he begins to lose himself in the darkest corners of his mind. A young boy is murdered, shaking the small community to its core. And a girl climbs into a van and vanishes in the deep, dark woods…

The newshound in reporter Geneva Chase spurs her to bad, if not downright dangerous, choices as two unrelated crimes unexpectedly collide. A 15-year-old-girl at her ward's high school has vanished along with her English teacher. Is this same-old, same-old, or something more? And then there's the abused woman who torched her sadistic husband, and how to keep her out of the clutches of powerful mobsters --- and thus, out of the news. Out on the crime beat, Geneva works to unravel the connection, if any, between these two disparate stories while her newspaper is put up for sale, a high-flying Hollywood production lights up the town, and her personal battles accelerate.

A.M. Homes exposes the heart of an uneasy America in her new collection --- exploring our attachments to each other through characters who aren't quite who they hoped to become, though there is no one else they can be. In "A Prize for Every Player," a man is nominated to run for president by the customers of a big box store, while he and his family do their weekly shopping. At a conference on genocide(s) in the title story, old friends rediscover themselves and one another --- finding spiritual and physical comfort in ancient traditions. And in "Hello Everybody" and "She Got Away," Homes revisits a Los Angeles family obsessed with the surfaces and frightened of what lives below.

Life is tough for a Gypsy detective in Budapest. The cops don’t trust you because you’re a Gypsy. Your fellow Gypsies, even your own family, shun you because you’re a cop. The dead, however, don't care. So when Balthazar Kovacs, a detective in the city's murder squad, gets a mysterious text message on his phone, he goes to work. The message has two parts: a photograph and an address. The photograph shows a man, in his early 30s, lying on his back with his eyes open, half-covered by a blue plastic sheet. The address is 26 Republic Square, the former Communist Party headquarters, and once the most feared building in the country. But when Kovacs arrives at Republic Square, the body is gone.

Nine years ago, a humiliated Larkin Lanier fled Georgetown, South Carolina, knowing she could never go back. But when she finds out that her mother has disappeared, she realizes she has no choice but to return to the place she both loves and dreads --- and to the family and friends who never stopped wishing for her to come home. Ivy, Larkin's mother, is discovered badly injured and unconscious in the burned-out wreckage of her ancestral plantation home. No one knows why Ivy was there, but as Larkin digs for answers, she uncovers secrets kept for nearly 50 years --- whispers of love, sacrifice and betrayal --- that lead back to three girls on the brink of womanhood who found their friendship tested in the most heartbreaking ways.

Lauren Groff brings readers into a physical world that is at once domestic and wild --- a place where the hazards of the natural world lie waiting to pounce, yet the greatest threats and mysteries are still of an emotional, psychological nature. Among those navigating this place are a resourceful pair of abandoned sisters; a lonely boy, grown up; a restless, childless couple, a searching, homeless woman; and an unforgettable, recurring character --- a steely and conflicted wife and mother. The stories in this collection span characters, towns, decades, even centuries, but Florida becomes its gravitational center: an energy, a mood, as much as a place of residence.

In GENTLEMEN FORMERLY DRESSED, Rowland Sinclair and his friends travel to England, where they feel safe. Then Viscount Pierrepont is discovered in his club, impaled by a sword. Pierrepont is sporting a frilly negligée and makeup --- so, a sex crime? Too embarrassing. And too bizarre a death for this aging gentleman, and him newly wed. His murder, and the suspicion falling on his young niece, quickly plunge the Australians into a queer world of British aristocracy, Fascist Blackshirts, illicit love, scandal, and spies ranging from London and its suburbs to Bletchley Park and Oxford, and inevitably drawing in Wil Sinclair as well as players like H.G. Wells and Winston Churchill. It's a world where gentlemen are not always what they are dressed up to be.

The sequel to Pearson's brilliant debut novel I DON'T KNOW HOW SHE DOES IT, HOW HARD CAN IT BE? follows the story of Kate Reddy, who is now facing her 50th birthday. Her children have turned into impossible teenagers; her mother and in-laws are in precarious health; and her husband is having a midlife crisis that leaves her desperate to restart her career after years away from the workplace. Will Kate reclaim her rightful place at the very hedge fund she founded? Will she rekindle an old flame, or will her house burn to the ground when a rowdy mob shows up for her daughter’s surprise to her parent's Christmas party? It must work out. After all, how hard can it be?

We know the facts of Mary Shelley’s life in some detail. But there has been no literary biography written this century, and previous books have ignored the real person, despite the fact that Mary and her group of second-generation Romantics were extremely interested in the psychological aspect of life. In this probing narrative, Fiona Sampson pursues Mary Shelley through her turbulent life, much as Victor Frankenstein tracked his monster across the arctic wastes. Sampson has written a book that finally answers the question of how it was that a 19-year-old came to write a novel so dark, mysterious, anguished and psychologically astute that it continues to resonate two centuries later.

In the 1920s, Zoya Andropova, a young refugee from the Soviet Union, finds herself in the alien landscape of an elite all-girls New Jersey boarding school. Having lost her family, her home and her sense of purpose, Zoya struggles to belong. When she meets the visiting writer and fellow Russian émigré Leo Orlov --- whose books Zoya has privately obsessed over for years --- her luck seems to have taken a turn for the better. But she soon discovers that Leo is not the solution to her loneliness: he's committed to his art and bound by the sinister orchestrations of his brilliant wife, Vera. As the reader unravels the mystery of Zoya, Lev and Vera's fate, Zoya is faced with mounting pressure to figure out who she is and what kind of life she wants to build.

A woman writer visits a Europe in flux, where questions of personal and political identity are rising to the surface and the trauma of change is opening up new possibilities of loss and renewal. Within the rituals of literary culture, Faye finds the human story in disarray amid differing attitudes toward the public performance of the creative persona. She begins to identify among the people she meets a tension between truth and representation. In this conclusion to her Outline trilogy, Rachel Cusk explores the nature of family and art, justice and love, and the ultimate value of suffering.

In the years preceding World War I, two young women meet, by chance, in a provincial town in France. Suzanne Malherbe, a shy 17-year-old with a talent for drawing, is completely entranced by the brilliant but troubled Lucie Schwob, who comes from a family of wealthy Jewish intellectuals. They embark on a clandestine love affair, terrified they will be discovered, but then, in an astonishing twist of fate, the mother of one marries the father of the other. As “sisters” they are finally free of suspicion, and, hungry for a more stimulating milieu, they move to Paris at a moment when art, literature and politics blend in an explosive cocktail.

Joyce Carol Oates’ new fiction collection opens with a woman, naked except for her high-heeled shoes, seated in front of the window in an apartment she cannot afford on her own. In this exquisitely tense narrative reimagining of Edward Hopper’s Eleven A.M., 1926, the reader enters the minds of both the woman and her married lover, each consumed by alternating thoughts of disgust and arousal, as he rushes --- amorously, murderously --- to her door. NIGHT-GAUNTS AND OTHER TALES OF SUSPENSE stands at the crossroads of sex, violence and longing --- and asks us to interrogate the intersection of these impulses within ourselves.

In 2029, Angelica Navarro, a Filipina nurse, works as caretaker for Sayoko Itou, who is about to turn 100 years old. One day, Sayoko receives a cutting-edge robot “friend” that will teach itself to anticipate Sayoko’s every need. Angelica wonders if she is about to be forced out of her much-needed job by an inanimate object --- one with a preternatural ability to uncover the most deeply buried secrets of the humans around it. The old woman has been hiding secrets of her own for almost a century. What she reveals is a hundred-year saga of forbidden love, hidden identities, and the horrific legacy of WWII and Japanese colonialism --- a confession that will tear apart her own life and Angelica’s.

During a difficult time, Karen Auvinen flees to a primitive cabin in the Rockies to live in solitude as a writer and to embrace all the beauty and brutality nature has to offer. When a fire incinerates every word she has ever written and all of her possessions --- except for her beloved dog Elvis, her truck and a few singed artifacts --- Karen embarks on a heroic journey to reconcile her desire to be alone with her need for community.

Texas: 1931. It’s the height of the Great Depression, and Bonnie is miles from Clyde. He’s locked up, and she’s left waiting, their dreams of a life together dwindling every day. When Clyde returns from prison damaged and distant, unable to keep a job and dogged by the cops, Bonnie knows the law will soon come for him. But there’s only one road forward for her. If the world won't give them their American Dream, they'll just have to take it.

Burundi, 1992. For 10-year-old Gabriel, life in his comfortable expatriate neighborhood of Bujumbura with his French father, Rwandan mother and little sister Ana is something close to paradise. These are carefree days of laughter and adventure --- sneaking Supermatch cigarettes and gorging on stolen mangoes --- as he and his mischievous gang of friends transform their tiny cul-de-sac into their kingdom. But dark clouds are gathering over this small country, and soon their peaceful existence will shatter when Burundi, and neighboring Rwanda, are brutally hit by civil war and genocide.

They go through both bottles of champagne right there on the High Line, with nothing but the stars over them... They drink and Lavinia tells Louise about all the places they will go together, when they finish their stories, when they are both great writers-to Paris and to Rome and to Trieste...Lavinia will never go. She is going to die soon. Louise has nothing. Lavinia has everything. After a chance encounter, the two spiral into an intimate, intense and possibly toxic friendship.

Wendy Mitchell had a busy job with the British National Health Service, raised her two daughters alone, and spent her weekends running and climbing mountains. Then, slowly, a mist settled deep inside the mind she once knew so well, blurring the world around her. She didn’t know it then, but dementia was starting to take hold. In 2014, at age fifty-eight, she was diagnosed with young-onset Alzheimer’s. In SOMEBODY I USED TO KNOW, Mitchell shares the heartrending story of her cognitive decline and how she has fought to stave it off. What lay ahead of her after the diagnosis was scary and unknowable, but Mitchell was determined and resourceful, and she vowed to outwit the disease for as long as she could.

More Coming Soon

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Books On Screen

May's Books on Screen roundup includes the feature films On Chesil Beach and The Seagull; the series premiere of "Sweetbitter" on Starz and season two of "13 Reasons Why" on Netflix, along with the season finale of "Rise" on NBC; and the DVD releases of Fifty Shades Freed, Wonderstruck and 12 Strong.